Mitt Romney's Religious Act of Political Accommodation

Over the weekend, Willard Romney, a most preposterous man, gave one of the most preposterous speeches ever delivered by an American politician. The presumptive nominee of the Republican party went down to Liberty University, the late Jerry Falwell's old diploma mill, to deliver the commencement address, because that is what presumptive Republican nominees do, at least if they want to become actual Republican nominees with a chance of actually becoming president. Prior to the speech, there was some loose talk that Romney, whose Mormon faith makes him in the eyes of most of the graduates to whom he was speaking, and in the eyes of almost all their pastors, and in the eyes of a great majority of the faculty, about as Christian as a priest of Baal, would deliver himself of a "Sister Souljah" moment, wherein he would tell the various noisome Bible-bangers where they could get off. To which speculation there were only two possible replies:

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1) Only Democrats are required to have "Sister Souljah moments," an obscure rapper being clearly as important to the Democratic party as the fundamentalist-yahoo vote is to the Republicans, and I am the Tsar of all the Russias.

2) Are you kidding? This is Willard Fking Romney. Where there's abject truckling to be done, he's the first one off the boat.

So, instead, the speech was seen as Romney's chance to "cement his relations" with a vital part of his constituency, albeit one that believes he regularly cuts up goats on a rock in his magic underwear in order to pay homage to St. Jesus of Polynesia. The quite obvious ridiculousness of the whole moment was the only story worth covering. Romney went before an audience and argued that, because they share common opinions on various political issues of the moment — in particular those involving sexy sexytime and the people to whom the Deity has granted permission to have it — their "faith" will bind them together. In other words, speaking to the graduates of a institution of Christian theocracy, Mitt Romney told them that, because they're all against marriage equality, they're all brothers in the spirit. I can't think of anything any politician ever has said that has denigrated the allegedly exalted status of "faith" more than that. It is fashioning religion into a form of ward-heeling. In general, according to the civility police, once people cite their "faith" as a rationale for their political position, all debate is supposed to cease immediately and be replaced by prayerful mumbling.

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In brief, the church to which so much of his audience belongs doesn't believe that Romney is a Christian at all. Mormons are not Trinitarian. They believe that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are separate divine entities. Christians believe they are three persons in one god. (And that is as far as we're going to go into that can of worms, thank you.) This is not a minor difference. Thousands of people have died disputing this very point. To argue, as Romney did in his speech, in which he didn't mention his own religion at all, that their common political positions should paper over their profound theological differences is to render "faith" into just another element in the overall political slanging match. I'm completely okay with that, by the way, but I doubt it's what Romney had in mind.

To that end, he engaged in some first-class sucking up to people who think he belongs to a cult:

Today, thanks to what you have gained here, you leave Liberty with conviction and confidence as your armor. You know what you believe. You know who you are. And you know Whom you will serve. Not all colleges instill that kind of confidence, but it will be among the most prized qualities from your education here. Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning. That said, your values will not always be the object of public admiration. In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world. Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid. It demands and creates heroic souls like Wesley, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, John Paul the Second, and Billy Graham. Each showed, in their own way, the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ. May that be your guide.

It is probably unkind to point out that Romney and the graduates he was addressing have profound differences over what exactly "the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ" actually is. (Also, too: Billy Graham and Wilberforce? Really? And John Wesley used to call the pope "The Man of Perdition," so I suspect he wouldn't have been overly fond of John Paul II. But, hey, they all probably would have agreed on The Pill, so there's that.) Someone is going to have to explain to me how eliding these most profound questions — and they are profound, at least to the people engaged in asking them — in favor of temporal political accommodation doesn't cheapen religious faith beyond measure. I am a struggling Roman Catholic Christian my own self — and it's none of your damn business why — and I think that Mr. James Madison, because he was a fk of a lot smarter than all of us are, was dead right when he pointed out that involving your religion in politics, and your politics in religion, works only to unreasonably secularize religious belief and unreasonably sanctify profane secular power:

Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

Self-governing people have to be wary of religious establishments that ally themselves to attain secular political goals, not merely because they do themselves damage, but also because they threaten the very safeguards that have allowed them to flourish in the first place. Willard Romney was a preposterous man even by his own standards over the weekend. He was a special pleader, asking a group of post-adolescents to ignore the fact that they believe different things about what he calls "something far greater than ourselves" because he wants them to vote for him so he can eliminate the Affordable Care Act and eviscerate some tepid Wall Street reforms. In fact, most of the graduates belong to churches that don't believe Romney's idea of that message is out and out heresy. But they're all "pro-life," so what are a few minor theological arguments among friends, anyway? And, besides, Romney will always have the last laugh on these people. He can baptize them all after they're dead. Scoreboard!